Hi, I’m Kristi.
My first, best and hardest job is as mom to an amazing young man. These days, I’m a bird-launcher. Empty nester sounds so sad; my life is hardly empty or sad. In fact, these days, I follow that bird around the world on his latest adventures. It’s a pretty rewarding job. And he still comes back to the nest from time to time.
But let’s not downplay the hard. Gary Landreth says that “parenting is like being pecked to death by a chicken.” While I am definitely not being pecked to death anymore, just because my son has launched does not mean parenting has ended. It has just taken a new form.
Parenting is hard. But now that I’m on this end of it, I can lend parents who are still in the thick of it, a different lens. I can’t recount the number of times I heard, “it sucks when your mom is a child psychotherapist!,” because I set some boundary (probably around a screen). But now I see the benefits of all those boundaries. Every once in a while, I even hear a “I get it now, Mom.”
There are two other things that are present today in our relationship. One, as the sole subject in my “parenting laboratory”, he knows the relational neuroscience. So now, he will call me out. “Mom, your dysregulation is not my responsibility.” That’s a tough pill to swallow. He’s right. My regulation is my responsibility; isn’t that what I was trying to teach him all along? But that leads to the second thing that’s present for us and that’s repair.
Have you seen Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Ted Talk on “The single most important parenting strategy”? It’s a doozy.
I fear I’m making it sound so easy and tidy. It was not. My parenting was messy, just like any other parent’s. Ask me about his junior year sometime. I suggested to my son that he write me a review for this website. He smiled slyly and said, “She’s a hard ass but gets it done.” I cringed and smiled.
My son and I continue to perfect repair. My relationship with my son is rich and informs me as a person and as a professional. But the best part, I see his ability to regulate, self-reflect and then repair other relationships in his life. That’s cool! It makes all the chicken pecks worth it.
In case you care about all that professional education and experience stuff, my experience has spanned a variety of settings including pre-schools, child protective services, a private non-profit, public elementary schools and community mental health. I have worked for the last 15+ years as a child therapist. I am a Registered Play Therapist – Supervisor (RPT-S), a Certified Theraplay® Practioner and have completed Synergetic Play Therapy - Level 1. I have trained with Robyn Gobbel in her Baffling Behavior Training Institute and I am a course facilitator for her Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: A Course for Parents.
